Slavoj Zizek Quotes

Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. Most of our young authors start to write a story and make a few observations from nature to add local color. The results are invariably false and hollow. Art must spring out of the fullness and richness of life.

In Utero is a testament to the artistic vision of Kurt Cobain. It's kind of a weird record, and it's strangely beautiful at the same time. And if you look at Kurt's paintings and his drawings - he even did a sculpture for me - it's a rising, tortured-spirit person. It's kind of weird. It's done well, but it's like what Dave was saying about having your own sound. Kurt was a great songwriter. He knew he had a good ear for a hook [and was] a great singer, great guitar player, and In Utero is a good representation of what he liked in art and how he expressed himself.

A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.

It's a beautiful idea to focus on how everything is temporary and always in flux. It may feel bad now, but it will feel good later, and vice versa. To write about those things brings this satisfying feeling as a creative person. There's a lot of music out there that's like, "I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black," and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.

Beautiful art sells. If it sells itself, it is an idolatrous commodity; if it sells anything else, it is a seductive advertisement.

A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art: that they shall excite or surprise us is indispensable.

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.

True art is the intermediary between man's ordinary nature and his higher potentialities.

After all, the supreme virtue in all art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives art a right to be.

It's so difficult to write good music. It's also really difficult to think about how to do it without violating the sanctity of the fourth wall.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.

To write music is to raise a ladder without a wall to lean it against. There is no scaffolding: the building under construction is held in balance only by the miracle of a kind of internal logic, an innate sense of proportion.

Art without life is a poor affair.

It takes more talent to write music, but it takes more courage to write lyrics.

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.

The truth is, the way you write music, it's a code. It has to be very precise. It's scientific, but ultimately it also depends on interpretation. It's very similar to how you grow a master plan: it's an objective document, but at the same time it is a lyrical document which allows through interpretation to become a harmonious work of art.

Art is - representing the beautiful. There must be Art in everything.

Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.

Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self.

To awaken human emotion is the highest level of art.